One of the biggest problems that organic gardeners face is how to keep animals out of the garden and keep insects from destroying their plants without using any harmful chemicals.

This problem isn’t really a new one at all, though, because before the term “organic” even existed, farmers and gardeners have been facing this same dilemma for centuries.

On a recent visit to Old Sturbridge Village, my favorite living history museum, I learned about one of the old-fashioned methods that gardeners in previous centuries used to help keep animals and insects from destroying their garden.

A couple of years ago I wrote a post about 4 Beginner Gardening Mistakes to Avoid, so this year I wanted to write another gardening post about some of the things to do right if you want a successful beginner garden.

These are all things that I wish I had started doing the first year that I planted a garden because they would have made my life so much easier and I would have had a much better harvest than I did!

These four secrets for a better beginner garden are all really simple things, but they can dramatically improve your chances of having a successful garden your first year. Or, if you’re like me and you’ve been gardening for several years with just so-so results, they can improve your already existing garden, too.

Saving the seeds from your own garden plants is a simple and easy way to make your frugal, old-fashioned garden even more frugal. Whether you’ve been gardening for years or whether this is your very first year gardening, with a little bit of planning you can easily save seeds from your garden harvest to use again for next year’s planting.

For most types of vegetables, saving seeds is a very easy process that requires little hands-on time and just a bit of organization and planning. Here are a few simple guidelines to make sure that your seeds are stored in a way that will keep them viable for planting next spring.

Even if you have really good soil and a lot of sunlight, there are still plenty of beginner gardening mistakes you can make that can keep your garden from turning out the way you had envisioned it would be.

I have rocky, sandy soil and a lot more shade than sun, so my poor little garden is already at a bit of a disadvantage, and my first few years I made plenty of beginner gardening mistakes.

Let’s just say it’s a good thing I’m not trying to depend on my garden to be my only source of food! I can only imagine the pressure that farmers and homesteaders must have felt back in the days when the success of their crops would decide whether they would go hungry that winter or not.

If you’ve ever taken a tour through an old historic house, chances are that you’ve probably seen bundles of herbs hanging from ceiling beams in the kitchen. In earlier centuries, it was very common for houses to have some sort of kitchen garden, even if it was a small one, and these gardens almost always included herbs for culinary and medicinal uses.

While herbs and herbal preparations could have been purchased at an apothecary, many households of the 18th, 19th, and early 20th century were far too frugal and economical to buy herbs that they could grow themselves, essentially for free, in their own backyards. By growing, harvesting, and drying their own herbs, they were able to save money and get the best quality herbs at the same time.

I’m trying something new with my garden this year. I’m going to schedule the timing of my planting by the moon signs.

At first, I thought the idea of planting by the moon signs was pure superstition, but the more I thought about it, the more I began to accept the idea that the moon’s phases might actually have some effect on the growth of the plants in my garden. If the moon’s gravitational pull can affect the tides of the ocean, why couldn’t it have an effect on the soil and the plants too?